


Not So Late As All That

by Hermaline75



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bittersweet, Frottage, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sibling Incest, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 18:15:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18628609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermaline75/pseuds/Hermaline75
Summary: A conversation.(Contains Endgame spoilers)





	Not So Late As All That

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure I wanted to write this, but I wrote one for Ragnarok and for Infinity War and this is probably my last chance to react to a film immediately for these two, so...
> 
> I wrote this very quickly.
> 
> Contains spoilers. And ridiculous self-indulgence.

Oh, Thor...

Thor, Thor, Thor...

Loki watched him from afar, from his hiding place on a distant world.

He'd noticed the duplicate Stark trying to interfere with the Tesseract and come to the most obvious conclusion; they were manipulating time somehow.

It was a feat he would not have believed the humans capable of a few years ago. They must have been very determined to change something. And that meant, some time in the future, something must have gone wrong. Horribly, terribly wrong.

It was the work of a second to snatch the cube and take himself away, to slip out of their grasp, only to find a second him back in that place. They'd been diligent, repairing their mistakes and then carefully putting things back, setting the timeline back on its proper course. But they hadn't seen him go. He was now a different Loki to the one dragged back to Asgard in chains.

Which meant he was out of his fate line. A man without history or future, just memories. Free to reinvent himself, to be whoever he might please. He was not Loki of Asgard or Jotunheim or anything else.

Just a man with a cube remarkably similar to the Tesseract.

It was difficult to know what to do with himself. He could not alter too many things without risking discovery, or accidentally destroying the universe. He certainly could not meet his other self; no mage worth the name would allow a double to survive.

And so he hid and lived rather simply and watched from a distance. Waiting for something to go wrong. Curious to find out just what it was they could not live with.

He watched himself imprisoned. His mother's death, how she almost seemed to know in advance. An adventure almost like the old days to vanquish Malekith, fighting by Thor's side.

He watched himself die and how Thor grieved. And that was perhaps when his anger began to soften.

At first, he tried to fight it, especially when it turned out the other him had exaggerated his own demise. Thor was not mourning him. He was mourning a memory, a boy who has long since ceased to be.

And yet that meant he had never quite given up hope.

He had never doubted.

Loki watched Thor's travails on Midgard, watched the unexpected rise of Hela, watched himself manipulate his way up the ranks of Sakaar, the rekindling of something almost like friendship between 'himself' and his brother.

And, yes, maybe sometimes he watched Thor alone in private moments for... personal pleasure. It was unethical, but then again, nothing about them and their relationship had ever exactly been right, had it?

He saw himself die for the third time.

And knew then that he no longer had to fear his other self.

It was very gratifying to see Thor try to avenge him - pun intended. He really did care.

And that was perhaps why he took it so hard when they failed.

Loki resisted the urge to go and help him for years. After all, he told himself, technically it was not him that Thor wept for in the night. It was the other him, the one who had sacrificed himself to buy them more time, who had sworn undying fidelity. He was a different man in many ways.

No, instead he had tried to continue onwards in his new life, despite the sudden vanishing of half the universe making everything very difficult.

He watched Thor kill Thanos. Getting revenge and finding it empty, merely ashes and pain. Crawling into a bottle, becoming...

Well, becoming the sorry soul he was looking at right now.

Why didn't he help in their final battle? Because he wanted to see how it would turn out.

Definitely not because he was worried about being a distraction and throwing Thor off... Certainly not.

And afterwards, he expected Thor to be happy. Yes, they'd lost friends, but that was war. He knew that. And they'd won. They'd revived the dead, most of them.

And yet...

Thor gave up Asgard to the Valkyrie's care, a decision even Loki had to admit was probably wise. He seemed to plan to travel with the other outcasts with no particular purpose.

And Loki knew he ought to leave alone, find a nice planet to rule over, maybe take a few hints from that Grandmaster fellow he'd seen for ways to have a good time and not allow Thor to know about him or potentially ruin his fun.

But seeing him now...

He wasn't happy. He was resigned. He was existing, not living really.

And that seemed like rather a waste of his golden brother. He'd given so much, too much to just give up now.

It was easy enough to sneak aboard the ship while they were out searching for their friend, the green one who was like him, out of her time and without the memories they expected her to have.

It was even easier to wait for Thor to stumble into bed, struggling out of his shirt and flopping face first onto the mattress, snoring almost immediately.

Loki didn't even need a spell to keep him asleep as he rolled him over, keen to examine his face.

There were a lot more lines here and very few of them were from laughing. Even in rest, there was a sadness around his eyes.

And that beard...

There were small scissors among a pile of tools in the corner and Loki set to, trimming it back to a more manageable length, revealing the line of his jaw in a more flattering way.

Now, this hair...

He broke a lot of the teeth of the comb he stole from elsewhere in the ship. Braids would have been one thing, but these tangles... They did not suit him.

Thor mumbled in his dreams but didn't wake. Loki took a firm grip on his hair and tried to rip out a particularly troublesome knot, fighting a losing battle.

A hand grabbed his wrist and his whole body was flipped easily, forcing a grunt out of him as his back hit the mattress. Despite his increased girth, it seemed Thor had lost none of his strength.

Thor stared down at him, those strange two-toned eyes, running a hand through his clipped beard and sending golden shards of hair raining onto them both.

"You're not him," Thor mumbled. "And so you have approximately five seconds to explain exactly who you are and what you think you're doing before I get very angry."

Ah...

"Are you so sure, brother?" Loki asked, getting a flinch in return for the term. "Don't I look like him? Sound like him, smell like him even? You've seen me die and return before. Why not again?"

Thor ripped open the front of his tunic without so much as a blink, jabbing at his chest. His unmarred chest. No mark from being run through. No scar from the elf's blade.

"You're not him," he repeated.

There was a familiar thrum, not Mjölnir but Stormbreaker flying across the room, a distinct sharpness coming into proceedings. This was not going well.

"You travelled in time," Loki said quickly. "So did your friends. And they were not as careful as they should have been when it came to avoiding accidents."

Thor narrowed his eyes, but lowered his weapon. Intrigued perhaps.

"You're from the past?"

"Sort of. I split away from my fate. It's... complicated. Too complicated for tonight perhaps. I'm him, but I'm also not. I didn't go through all the same things. I watched, but that's rather different. I was trying to be a new man after New York. Escape a few things, be truly free."

A frown, lost. It was tricky to get one's head around.

"Then why are you here?"

Why was he here?

"Because I couldn't bear to see you like this."

Thor sat back a little, straddling him, just like old times in a way.

"Fat, you mean?" he said.

Loki rolled his eyes.

"Unhappy. You've never been like this before, even at your lowest. And I know why. It's an urge that I never really felt, but you do. Very strongly."

"And what's that?"

Loki reached up to cup his face, the sharp ends of freshly cut hairs catching his skin.

"You need to know that you did well. You did good things."

Thor blinked at him and let out a shuddering sigh, upset and angry.

"How do you know?" he growled. "You weren't there. I let Mother die. I let you... Him trick me over and over again like a fool. I let Father spend his last days among strangers. I let Asgard fall. I lost you, them, everyone and then I couldn't even prevent..."

The tears were already falling, but for all his anger, he let Loki pull him down and cradle him.

"You took the Dark Elves away from Asgard. You secured the Aether."

"Jane did that."

"But she needed you. Just as your friends needed you to defeat the metal man, to protect the falling city."

"Hundreds died."

"And hundreds lived because of you. And when Hela rose, you fought tooth and nail to get back to Asgard, to save it, to protect people."

"Heimdall saved them, not me. I let Asgard burn. And then Heimdall..."

Was this what it was like to live with a pessimist? It was dreadfully tiresome.

"No one would have survived without you," Loki insisted.

"Or you," Thor said. "Or the Valkyrie. Or Bruce."

"And who galvanized us? Who made me see that there was more than self-interest? Who helped Brunnhilde back to life and out of Sakaar? Who soothed the green beast? Who killed Thanos?"

The mumble was almost completely lost against his chest.

"Tony did."

"Not the first time."

"The first time, we lost. Those Asgardians I saved - for what? They scrape out an existence now. They're better off without me."

"Well, I'm not."

And finally that seemed to break through.

Thor looked up at him, a tiny glimmer of hope in his eyes.

"I need you," Loki said. "Because you try. Because you strive to do the right thing despite the odds. That's who you are. You get floored and get up and keep going, you lose everything and gain determination, you never..."

And this was difficult to admit, but he had to.

"You never quite stopped believing in me. No matter what you said. I know you didn't." 

It was strange to be kissed. A half-forgotten memory, another life, tasting salt to ground him. His hands roamed across Thor's back - yes, a little softer than he remembered - but warm and alive and safe.

Somehow, they sorted their legs out, Thor's thigh between his, rolling his hips forward in a way that spoke to long ago, a memory they shared, a desire, a want. Loki felt his body react eagerly, keen for pressure, for friction, just as his heart was for love.

"Tell me again," Thor murmured.

"What?"

"That I... I did good things."

Of course. That was what he needed.

"You did," Loki whispered. "You did good things. You tried and tried and that's what matters."

He could feel the heat within himself, arching upwards and moving together, pushing for some kind of mutual release that might mean something again. Thor was clinging to him like he felt he was in a dream, like he was afraid to wake up.

"I'm proud of you," Loki murmured.

Thor practically sobbed, speeding up, pulling Loki along with him and pressing kisses to his skin.

It really was like old times. Spilling in their clothes like youths, like they had no stamina at all, collapsing into each other's arms. And then Thor rolled to the side, stroking Loki's cheek gently. Worried about being too heavy perhaps, though he wasn't.

"You're not him," he whispered.

"I'm... a different him. We were one and the same, once."

"I feel like I've not really been myself of late either."

That might be true, though Loki had seen flashes of him beneath the forced mirth and the lack of care for himself. Moments where the old Thor could still be found.

"Maybe we can... try to relearn ourselves."

"Together?"

He took Thor's embrace as a yes, and held him as he wept for the boys they used to be.

And maybe for the men they were somehow still becoming even after all these years.


End file.
